Disclaimer: All the opinions expressed in this article are
the opinions of Dr. Seshadri Kumar alone and should not be construed to mean
the opinions of any other person or organization, unless explicitly stated
otherwise in the article.

How valid are these comparisons? What was the status of women at the time of
the Mahabharata? Was Draupadi really the
model of a liberated woman who insisted on getting justice for the wrongs done
to her, and succeeded? And is the fact
that women today are unable to get that kind of justice a reflection of a
weakening of women’s status in Indian society, as some believe? Were women better off in the hoary past?

To understand the answers to these questions better, let us
look at some particulars of what happened to Draupadi in the Mahabharata.

The
Game of Dice

The Game of Dice is an important incident in the epic
Mahabharata, in which the Kauravas, jealous of the prosperity of their cousins
the Pandavas, invite them to play a game of dice with them in their court at
Hastinapura, in the specially-constructed assembly hall. Shakuni, the uncle of Duryodhana, the eldest
Kaurava, who will play the eldest Pandava, Yudhishthira, in the game that
follows, is a master at the game.

Yudhishthira is fond of gambling but is not skilled at
it. He recognizes the dangers of playing
dice, but out of politeness, cannot decline the invitation. Yudhishthira’s mortal weakness is that once
he starts playing, he cannot stop. He is
a degenerate gambler.

The Kauravas exploit this weakness of Yudhishthira. He first loses valuables, land, jewels, and
all his possessions, but still doesn’t stop playing. Goaded on by Shakuni, Yudhishthira then
gambles away his brothers, one by one, and finally himself. When he thinks he has lost everything, then
Shakuni asks him if he wants to play one last time by gambling something he has
not yet gambled – his wife, Draupadi.
The desperate Yudhishthira agrees and loses Draupadi.

Draupadi’s
Horror

Drunk with their success, the Kauravas decide to use this
opportunity to humiliate the Pandavas.
Duryodhana asks his charioteer to summon Draupadi to the court as a
slave of the Kauravas. She is amazed at
the news, and asks a legal question
of the assembly: whether, Yudhishthira having lost himself, could stake his
wife when he was no longer free.
Duryodhana, in response, asks the charioteer to tell Draupadi to come to
the assembly and ask the question herself.
Draupadi refuses, at which point Duryodhana asks his brother Dussasana
to bring Draupadi to the assembly, using force if necessary.

Draupadi, on seeing Dussasana approach her, tries to run to
the female chambers of Dhritarashtra’s queen Gandhari, but Dussasana drags her
by her hair and brings her to the assembly.
In the assembly Draupadi, weeping, asks her question of the elders:
whether, having lost himself to Shakuni, Yudhishthira could stake Draupadi.

The
Debate in the Assembly

To this, the patriarch Bhishma responds (Ganguli, Sabha
Parva, p. 129): “O blessed one, morality is subtle. I therefore am unable to decide this point
that thou has put, beholding that on the one hand one that hath no wealth
cannot stake the wealth belonging to others, while on the other hand wives are always under the orders and at the disposal of their
lords. Yudhishthira can abandon the
whole world full of wealth, but he will never sacrifice morality. The son of Pandu hath said, 'I am won.' Therefore, I am unable to decide this matter.
Shakuni hath not his equal among men at dice-play. The son of Kunti still voluntarily staked
with him. The illustrious Yudhishthira
doth not himself regard that Shakuni hath played with him deceitfully. Therefore, I cannot decide this point.”

This is followed by a protest from Vikarna, one of
Duryodhana’s younger brothers, who states his viewpoint that because of
Draupadi’s objection that Yudhishthira was no longer a free man when he staked
Draupadi, as well as a second point that Draupadi did not belong to
Yudhishthira alone, being the common wife of all the brothers, and so could not be
staked by Yudhishthira alone.

The matter is finally settled by Karna, who states that
since Yudhishthira had lost all his possessions to Shakuni, he had already lost
Draupadi, whether or not he staked her explicitly. He further states that even the clothes on
the Pandavas and on Draupadi belong to the Kauravas, and if the Kauravas order
it, the Pandavas should remove them. He
asks Dussasana to remove Draupadi’s robes as well. The Pandavas do not object to any of this,
but remove their own upper garments in response. Dussasana proceeds to remove Draupadi’s
single robe in which she is dressed.

What is supposed to have happened, according to the epic, is
that as Dussasana tried to remove Draupadi’s robe, new robes kept magically
appearing and he was unable to disrobe her because she was praying to Lord Krishna
to help and he gave her divine help. (What actually happened might have been much worse for Draupadi; but we will never know, since history is written by the victors, and the Pandavas, understandably, would not have wanted history
to record events that portrayed an indignity to their wife any worse than this.)

Nevertheless, let us take the events as they are recorded,
and see what they tell us about the society of those days.

The
Status of Women in the Society of the Mahabharata

Note that in all these debates in
the assembly, no one (including Draupadi) asks whether a husband has any right
to gamble away his wife! Even the wise
Bhishma, who knows the Law (Dharma) better than anyone else, says that “wives
are always under the orders and at the disposal
of their lords.” Draupadi’s own argument is
not whether Yudhishthira has any right to stake her, but rather the technical
point of whether, having lost himself, he could stake her. Karna’s argument also appears to have force
according to the rules of the day (for no one disputes it) – that if
Yudhishthira had lost everything he owned, including himself and his brothers,
his wife is automatically lost, being counted as one of his possessions.

Look at poor Draupadi’s plight. Having been lost by her husband in a game of
dice, she had absolutely no legal recourse.
Dussasana, who disrobed her in the assembly, and perhaps worse too,
would have been guilty of no crime under the laws of those days, because he was
only doing all this with a slave of his, and slaves had no rights. They belonged to their master, who could do
what they pleased with their slaves.
(Remember the abuses meted out to black women during the period of
slavery in American history – their owners regularly used them for sex when
they wanted it.)

Yudhishthira
the Just

The real criminal in this entire episode, and the real
reason for all the heartburn and the eventual war in the Mahabharata, is not
Duryodhana, Dussasana, or Karna; for they only behaved as a master was allowed
to behave with his slaves in those days; but the degenerate gambler husband,
Yudhishthira, who doomed his wife to a life of slavery (even if, fortunately,
only for a short period) because of his addiction to gambling. But here is the rub: this act of abandoning
his wife to such cruel people is not even considered an offense by the gods of
those days.

In the final chapter of the Mahabharata, the five Pandavas
and Draupadi attempt to ascend directly to heaven in human form. Yudhishthira is the only one who succeeds,
the others having fallen and died in the journey as a consequence of their
various imperfections; but even he has to spend a sixteenth portion of a day in
hell as a penalty for his sins – but the sins do not include abandoning his
wife in the game of dice. The only sin
that is counted against Yudhishthira is his having lied on the battlefield about
Aswatthama, his preceptor Drona’s son, having died.

The abandonment of one’s wife is considered
to be insignificant, an offense so minor that it pales in comparison with
uttering a lie. In his assembly reply to
Draupadi, even Bhishma doesn’t fault Yudhishthira’s morality for staking his
wife – instead he praises Yudhishthira for his “morality.” Abandoning your wife did not affect your
moral standing in those days.

Married
to Five Men - Willingly?

One should also remember the way Draupadi was married off to
the five brothers. At the swayamvara of
Draupadi, it was Arjuna who executed the difficult feat set for the winner who
would take Draupadi as a wife. When they
came home, Yudhishthira said to his mother, “Look, mother, what alms we have
gotten today!” And their mother, Kunti,
who had not seen Draupadi with the brothers, simply said, “Whatever it is,
share it equally among yourselves.” A
casual comment like that, said in ignorance, was treated as an order, and the
five brothers decided to wed Draupadi together.

In the entire discussion that follows with Draupadi’s father, Drupada,
not once does anyone ask Draupadi if she has an opinion about the matter – that
she was to be shared by five men. There
is an extensive discussion on whether five brothers marrying one woman would be
committing a sin, and when Drupada is relieved of that concern, he gives his
assent to the wedding. Whether Draupadi
cares about her body being shared is no one’s concern. (I should add here that Satya
Chaitanya has argued, reasonably convincingly, that Draupadi’s silence
during this entire episode is completely at odds with her generally vocal and
assertive nature elsewhere in the epic, and suggests that Vyasa whitewashed
some portions of the epic to remove content that would have been unacceptable
to the society of his times, such as Draupadi’s objections to this arrangement.)

In addition to having to physically compromise herself in
this way, poor Draupadi also has to be the butt of offensive taunts, such as
the one Karna throws at her in the assembly after she has been gambled away: “The
gods have ordained only one husband for one woman. This Draupadi, however, hath many
husbands. Therefore, certain it is that
she is an unchaste woman. To bring her,
therefore, into this assembly attired though she be in one piece of cloth –
even to uncover her is not at all an act that may cause surprise.” Draupadi pays for the foolishness of her
husbands who trap her in this unconventional marriage that is not fully
accepted even in their society – by men who were therefore duty-bound to
protect her – but whose failure to do so is not counted as a sin or a failure
in the epic.

Conclusion

So, while it is easy to talk about the gang rape victims in
India and compare them to Draupadi, remember that in the age of Draupadi, women
had no rights. They were treated as
chattel to be used at their fathers’ and husbands’ whims. At least, in today’s India, women have some
rights, and they don’t belong to their husbands.

Violence occurs today as well against women, but at least it
is regarded as a crime. Even if Dussasana
had raped Draupadi in the assembly hall, the nobles assembled in the court
wouldn’t have even filed their society’s equivalent of an FIR.

After all, she was their slave.

But, in the end, though, Draupadi did have the last
laugh. Bhima tore out Dussasana’s heart
in the great battle, tore out his arms that had dragged Draupadi by the hair, drank
the blood from Dussasana’s still-beating heart, broke Duryodhana’s thighs and
killed him.

Those who insulted Draupadi paid for the insults with their
lives. Draupadi may not have had legal
recourse for the insults done to her, but most rape victims today would be
delighted if they could get that kind of revenge on the men who raped them. One could argue that the FIRs they file
against their rapists aren’t worth the paper they are written on, and they
would any day trade them for a good old eye-for-an-eye, the way Draupadi handed
it to Dussasana and Duryodhana.

14 comments:

First, wonderfully concluded! The comparative analysis is very convincing and well thought through. A word of concern. If your analysis is taken in part (leaving behind the very apt conclusion), then today's overly enthusiastic modern day intellectuals will use this angle to talk ill about the epics and extend their pseudo intelligence to ridicule our past and our Gods.

Kumar, I am somewhat confused by your article. The metaphor of a helpless Draupadi appealing to a moralizing but essentially impotent establishment is a powerful and entirely apt image.

However, I am not sure if anyone actually makes the argument that this episode shows Draupadi as a liberated woman or that the status of women then was much better than today. If someone did make such a claim, I would first ask them to present arguments why they think this to be the case, instead of going into a rebuttal.

As you have clearly pointed out, the episode only shows that in that society women had no rights whatsoever, it was perfectly OK not to ask their consent before marrying them or giving them away as property, and that depriving them of such courtesies did not count against you in the big court up there.

Your conclusion says the Kauravas got what they deserved. That is the factual ending of the story, and is no different from the ending of countless Hindi movies where the bad guys get a similar violent comeuppance. So what is the point? It was not clear to me if such form of punishment is what you were advocating. In any case, it does not say anything about the status of women, only about the criminal justice system.

Coming to Koushik's comment, he is worried about some of us speaking ill of the epics. Mahabharata is a story, whether factual or fictional, still a story. How can one speak ill of a story? But I can certainly speak ill of the society that it depicts. And I will...Kumar's concluding observations notwithstanding. I do not judge historical individuals by the conventions of modern society, but I certainly would compare old conventions with new conventions, and judge which ones in my view are the superior ones.

Dhananjay: I am trying to establish the validity of the metaphor. On the surface, this is a powerful and apt metaphor. It is certain that the popular image of Draupadi makes people believe this is an appropriate metaphor. While it has pull, I want people to consider whether the metaphor is really appropriate. Let me be more explicit.

In the Mahabharata, the "establishment," as you put it, consists of Dhritarashtra, Bhishma, Drona, and Kripa - the elders, who are being compared to Manmohan Singh, Sonia, etc. - or if you will, Indian society, the Supreme Court, what you will. One of the IMPORTANT DIFFERENCES I wanted to highlight between modern victims of violence and Draupadi is that in the story of Draupadi, the establishment was REALLY impotent - in other words, there was no legal way they could intervene. What happened was considered to be a foolish mistake by Yudhishthira and nothing more - Draupadi was merely facing the consequences of Yudhishthira's addiction to gambling. On the contrary, in today's world, the establishment is quite capable of taking action; it is simply the will that is not there. The laws are out there clearly stating that what is done to these women victims is a crime (unlike in Draupadi's case) - it is simply the lack of a moral will to act, as in the case of the policemen in Delhi who tried to give Rs. 2000 as a bribe to the parents of that 5-year old girl who was raped so they would not file an FIR. There was so much debate in India about whether to sanction the death penalty for rapists, without a clear realization of where the problem lies. The problem does not lie in inadequate punishment, but in the enforcement of that punishment. What use would a death penalty be if the police station refuses to even file an FIR?

No, I am not advocating such a form of punishment for today's rapists. I was merely pointing out that in the epic, as in any Hindi movie (as you point out), the ending is calculated (it may have happened that way in reality as well) to bring joy to people who feel for Draupadi. My point is that, as in Hindi movies, you aren't going to have a hero (Bhima in this case) beat up and kill the bad guys in real life. So while things were bad for women in those days, there was a fairytale ending in this epic. In today's reality, there are no fairytale endings. The criminal justice system is broken - in the past, too, you could argue it was broken, except that according to the laws of those days, there was no crime committed against the woman in the first place, because their rights were so limited. So you could argue that viewed within the laws of those days, Bhishma, Drona, and Kripa did nothing wrong in being unresponsive to Draupadi. You cannot say the same thing for Sheila Dixit or Manmohan Singh.

And yes, coming to Koushik's comment, and your comment on it: It is a story, yes, but one can comment on the morals exhibited in the story. For instance, many would find fault with the character of Rama in the Ramayana who questioned his wife's Sita's chastity (there are arguments/counter-arguments/interpretations on what that actually meant, but I won't go into that here.) That is a criticism of the behavior of a character in the epic.

Similarly, one could criticize (and I will) Yudhishthira's behavior in the Mahabharata, of abandoning his wife. In my mind, there is NO EXCUSE for that. You could say that I am speaking ill of Yudhishthira. Maybe that is what Koushik means by speaking ill of the epic. I have two responses to this.

One is that blind acceptance of the purported actions of divinities cannot reinforce religion in people's minds. If people have a problem with the behavior of a mythical character, no matter how exalted, it is best to debate it, otherwise one is merely suppressing and covering up cracks in one's faith. Secondly, Yudhishthira is not divine. In fact, one of the nice things about the Mahabharata is that with the exception of Krishna, all the characters are very human. Krishna is the only one who is portrayed as divine. To criticize the behavior of Yudhishthira cannot be perceived as the criticism of a deity by any stretch of the imagination.

Dhananjay, I fully agree with the rest of your last paragraph. I will only add to that George Santayana's immortal statement: "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it."

This is an excellent analysis. I especially like the way you treat the epic as recorded history, with all the biases and flaws of historical record.

You have analysed one aspect of the epic with regard to today's times, which is feminism and the status of women. I can't help thinking this is also intertwined with casteism. After all, at the contest where Draupadi was won, Karna attempted to compete, and it is entirely possible that he could have matched Arjuna's feat. However, Draupadi spoke out and said she would not marry a low-born person, forcing him to withdraw from the contest. From the standpoint of our times, this was nothing short of casteist discrimination, and one could view her subsequent sufferings as retribution. But even within the confines of the epic itself, she was mistaken about Karna's caste, and had she stayed silent, she might have been his wife instead. And if Karna had subsequently been 'outed' as the eldest Pandava, he might have been the unquestioned king and Draupadi might have been his queen, with no other husbands to share her. The entire Mahabharata might have taken a different turn if Draupadi had not expressed her casteist prejudice at that fateful juncture.

To be fair to Draupadi, the mores of the days of the Mahabharata were very strict when it came to inter-caste marriages. Draupadi cannot be faulted if she wanted to protect herself. It is easy to view her situation in today's day and age, when marrying a person of a different caste can be considered by many a noble act - why, indeed, the MP government gives each marriage between a low caste person and a high-caste person Rs. 75,000. But in those days people paid a price for indulging in stunts like these. View Karna's own plight. He was (mistakenly) regarded as a Suta - an offspring of a Kshatriya father and a Brahmana mother - and therefore lower than either. Why would Draupadi, a Kshatriya maiden, want to willingly marry a Suta like Karna, and doom her offspring to an even lower social status? As the case of Karna showed, wealth, kingship, and demonstrated valour still did not buy you the respect in those days that birth alone did. So let's cut Draupadi some slack.

And Karna would never have been outed. The only person who could have outed him was Kunti. Who would have believed him even if he stated the truth of his birth? It would be his word, the word of a low-born Suta, against that of a Kshatriya queen. No contest. And Kunti was way too selfish to out him.

I also disagree with Koushik above. No epic is above criticism, and we should not be so culturally insecure about criticism. There is a lot to criticise in Indian civilisation. Let us take the opportunity to take criticism constructively and build a better society. Circling the wagons does us no favours, and only reinforces our image as a thin-skinned people with much to be thin-skinned about.

1. Draupadi was also attracted to the pandavas. She is described as being cheerful after her marriage was decided with the pandavas.

2. Yes kidnap and rape was legal at the time, but that does not mean that society had no respect for women. How do you conclude that rape is a crime... In fact many of the so-called rape victims in the epic enjoyed the rape.